The keynote interview at SXSWi 2008 was an interview with Mark Zuckerberg (favorite), founder of Facebook, by Sarah Lacy. The topics of discussion range from Facebook strategy, goals, and even some of the stories about some crazy things that have happened on Facebook.
What
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makes this interview so interesting, besides some of the insider info for fans of Facebook, was it being dubbed an interview “train-wreck”. Here are some quotes from several journals:
“They came expecting a civilized, one-on-one discussion, but they got what some attendees described as “a train wreck.” — Wired
“Audience members, apparently tired of constant interruptions by Lacy and references to her own projects in the interview, essentially said they weren’t going to sit for such lame questions and demanded to ask their own.” — InternetNews
However, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington has a different take on what happened:
“Hereâs what I think really happened. There was an unruly group of attendees, mostly at the back of the session, who heckled Lacy (and Zuckerberg) during the interview. A few others joined in as well at different points. The heckling drew Twitters saying that some people werenât happy with the interview. And then those Twitters spawned new ones, trying to outdo the previous ones. And then the âreal journalistsâ jumped in head first and laid into Lacy, safe in the knowledge that they had Twitter messages to back them up.” — TechCrunch
Well, here - watch for yourself. Perhaps someone in attendance could let us know what really happened?
I’ve been to many informal interviews, but I wasn’t at this particular one. As Arrington says, having the crowd get involved with interviews is par for the course, though I do believe this wasn’t a very good interview. Perhaps expectations are set too high for these types of situations? Maybe we think that all of these interviews with the leaders on the Web should be top-notch journalism instead of informal, fun conversations? I’m not sure - but I do know that people seemed to expect something-more, and what they got wasn’t all that great.
Zuckerberg, having been interviewed hundreds of times and was even interviewed by Barbara Walters, is obviously up for a challenging interview the same as he is an informal one. I feel bad for him because none of this backlash was his fault.
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